


Thin Ice

by psocoptera



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Ableist Language, Alternate Reality, Alternate Universes, Angst, Coming Out, Estranged Families, Homophobia, Impersonation, M/M, Mirror Universe, Pining, Reconciliation, Situational Exceptions to Monogamy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-06
Updated: 2015-03-06
Packaged: 2018-03-16 12:45:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3488735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psocoptera/pseuds/psocoptera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bitty wakes up in the Ice Capades.</p>
<p>(In which family is difficult, the wrong people are kissed, and the NHL has a secret magic problem.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thin Ice

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a huge sucker for tropes - amnesia, bodyswap, time travel, daemonverse, psychic bonds. What fandom isn't better with alternate realities? (Hopefully not this one.)

JACK

Jack knows better than to crowd an injury, but when Bittle gets slammed into the boards and drops to the ice, he's halfway there before he knows he's moving.

Bittle doesn't move, and the ref is there, and Coach Murray is coming out, and, _shit_ , Bittle can't be concussed again - and then suddenly he sits up under the ref's restraining hand. And smiles. He smiles a big Bittle smile like he's giving a tour or handing out pies.

"Okay," Coach Murray says, "How are you doing?"

"Fine!" Bittle says brightly. "Keen and ready."

"Coupla questions," Murray says, obviously relieved that Bittle isn't catatonic, hysterical, or unconscious. "You know today's date?"

"March 6th 2015," Bittle rattles off, "A great day to skate."

"And we're playing at..." Murray leads.

"Um," Bittle says, and Jack catches the tiny dart of his eyes away from Murray, the minuscule flash of panic before he refreshes the smile.

Murray's relief evaporates. "Okay," he says, "Sit tight, we're getting you off the ice."

**  
BITTY

Eric blinks. He's on his back on the ice and there's a giant orange fish leaning over him.

No, it's a man with a fish head sticking out of his torso.

"Ricky," he's saying, "Ricky, c'mon, Jan's coming over, happy _family_..."

An unfamiliar woman squats down next to him. Eric isn't sure he's ever seen someone wear a skirt suit with ice skates before. He tries to sit up and the fish guy puts a hand behind his back, helping.

"Bittle," the woman says, "Are you hurt?"

Eric tilts his head and shrugs his shoulders. He doesn't seem to be in any pain. He flexes his wrists and wiggles his toes.

"No?" he answers.

"And yet you don't seem happy to be here," the woman snaps. "You're out tomorrow. Cody, get him off my ice. Swidler, you're in for Bittle for rats, Horowitz come up for Poppins, back line tighten, Bittle, why are you still here?"

Eric scrambles to his feet, accepting the offered hand of the man in the clownfish costume. Oh, it's Nemo. Eric himself seems to be wearing chef's whites, and - he looks behind him - there's a puffy white toque fallen on the ice. The fish man - Cody? - scoops it up.

"Here, the last thing you need is to piss off Kristin too," he says under his breath, taking Eric's elbow and steering him towards a large curtain at one end of the ice. There are about a hockey team's worth of players milling around in a variety of colorful costumes. "Are you going to be okay to get back to the hotel by yourself?"

"Um," Eric says. He has no idea where the team hotel is, he'd been half-asleep on the bus. Also this is definitely a different arena than the one where he would have sworn he was just playing their last game of the regular season. "No?"

"Okay," the man says, "Wait for the bus after ice check, I guess. That was a bad fall, huh?"

"I think it might have been," Eric says gingerly. "Bad fall" seems like an understatement - he's got to be either brain injured or hallucinating. Or the team is playing a _really_ elaborate prank.

"Danny totally tripped you," the guy tells him. They're through a gap in the curtain, into a sort of backstage area. "Ugh, that guy. But I'm sure you'll feel better soon, sweetie." He drops a quick peck onto Eric's lips and ducks back through the curtain, tossing Eric the hat. "Like they say, just keep swimming!"

_Sweetie?_

**  
JACK

Bittle freaks out when he sees the medics coming out with the stretcher. "I'm fine!" he says, wriggling out from under Murray's hand on his shoulder and climbing to his feet. He immediately windmills, almost falling over backwards as his feet shoot out from under him, saved only by a wild lurch forward. He stays there, half-bent, looking down at his skates suspiciously.

"Haha," he says weakly, "Hockey skates. Right, okay!"

"Bittle, son," Coach Murray starts, "You're obviously - "

Bittle looks around and locks gazes with Jack. He ducks around Murray and skates over, grabbing onto Jack's arm.

"No docs," he says, looking up at him all big-eyed. (Even pupils, Jack is relieved to see.) "Please, I can't, I swear I feel fine."

Jack knows better than to cover up an injury, especially a possible concussion, but something about Bittle's desperation resonates with him.

"Can the assessment wait ten minutes?" Jack asks, before he realizes he's going to. "The team will play better with him on the bench."

He's not trying to do a captain voice but he can see the thing happening that happens to him sometimes, where people around him (even people twice his age, who should know better) go along with what he's saying because of some aura of who he is. Sure enough, the coach and the ref and the medics are all nodding like that's a reasonable plan. Bittle smiles up at him in gratitude.

Jack plays out the period mechanically - it was the third, they're up by one, and it's not like they haven't already clinched their playoff spot. Between shifts, he sees Bittle looking around the arena, scanning the scoreboard and crowd, and even craning his neck to eye the notes on Lardo's clipboard.

Bittle is whisked away at the final buzzer, and Jack stumbles through the post-game business. His final regular-season Samwell game should be a big deal, he thinks, but he can't really focus on anything other than how Bittle is doing on the concussion assessment.

He overhears Murray and Coach Hall murmuring as he gets out of the shower.

"He's completely fine on cognitive, balance, coordination, all of that," Murray is saying. "Not admitting to any symptoms, doesn't even seem to have a bump or scratch on him. But he whiffed the Maddocks, had no idea who we played last or who won."

Hall frowns, and Jack can feel himself frowning too.

"I hate to put him through the ER when he can rattle off more digits backwards than I can," Murray goes on, "And I think he'd still be standing on one foot if we hadn't stopped him. Do you think it could be a... _mental thing_?"

Jack winces. If Murray is on the lookout for psychological problems in his players, that's probably not on account of Bittle.

"Hell if I know," Hall says, "Let's keep an eye on him and check for symptoms again when we get off the bus, I'd rather take him to Norwood than get stuck in the ER here if it comes to it."

Jack realizes he's lurking around wearing only a towel, and goes to get changed. He sees Bittle's pads in a confused heap on the floor, like Bittle had struggled out of them without quite knowing how they went on. Bittle himself is pulling on a hoodie and reassuring a babbling Chowder that he's just fine.

Jack keeps watching out of the corner of his eye, and sees Bittle looking out of the corner of _his_ eye, carefully imitating the rest of the team in packing up his gear.

He can't deny the clench of fear in his guts for his winger.

**  
BITTY

A no-nonsense woman with a clipboard descends on Eric and takes the chef's hat out of his hands before he has time to wonder what to do with it. When he tentatively asks her where he can get changed, expecting her to act like he's nuts, she just rolls her eyes and agrees that she's also at the point in the tour where all the venues have run together.

The dressing room turns out to be labeled within an inch of its life and Eric finds a green button-down and black jeans neatly folded on the chair of BITTLE. (Boxers tucked modestly inside the jeans, whew.) He feels like he's putting on someone else's clothes, but they fit, as do the worn black chucks under the chair. When he's divested of his skates and costume, the clipboard woman tells him she'll "release his valuables" and unlocks a sort of cabinet on wheels and rummages until she finds a ziplock labeled R BITTLE in his handwriting.

It contains a wallet, an antique flip phone, and what Eric is pretty sure is his old high school iPod. Eric has no idea what to make of this odd assortment, and thanks the woman on autopilot.

"Did Jan say what she wants done for sweeps?" she asks.

Eric tries to remember what the woman on the ice had said. "Swidler for rats?" he guesses. "I'm sorry, I don't - "

"Oh, don't worry," the woman said. "Hey, I know you're off roster, but if you want to hit craft services I'll look the other way."

Craft services turns out to be a pair of long tables with coffee, tea, bagels, fruit and vegetable trays, and cookies. Eric dispenses hot water onto a bag of herbal tea (he's tempted by the coffee, but this seems like an occasion for something calming) and meanders back out into the arena proper, where the skaters are drilling a big group number while lights somewhere up in the rafters get angled and focused.

Wallet. iPod. Phone. Wallet seems like the place to start.

His wallet contains a Florida driver's license issued to Eric Richard Bittle, a Mastercard, a Bank of America debit card, a Marriott hotel keycard, a blue Walt Disney Company ID with DISNEY ON ICE printed in a white bar at the bottom, and 36 dollars in bills (a twenty, a ten, and six ones).

The iPod contains not just his high school music collection, but most of his favorite songs now. Apparently he likes "Chandelier" just as much in this life as in the other one.

He has to stop and take a long sip of tea before he can think again about what he just thought there. He _should_ be thinking concussion, he knows that. He fell, he's experiencing confusion and memory loss... it's just that last time he had a concussion it felt like a headache and a little fatigue and queasiness, not an elaborately detailed alternate life complete with job and possible boyfriend.

Maybe he has amnesia, and this is the future? Half-cringing, he opens the inexplicable phone. He's not entirely sure a phone this primitive would even know the date, but it does, and it's still the day he thought it was, or at least, the phone thinks so too.

Besides the date and time, the phone also offers the helpful options of PHONE and OTHER.

Eric taps at PHONE until he realizes the screen is just a display, and he has to press a button down below the screen to choose it. He is now READY TO DIAL, unless he wants to look at CALL LOG, which he certainly does.

He doesn't seem to use his phone very much. The most recent five calls sent or received, to or from RYAN CODY, RYAN CODY, ANAKO HIMEMU..., RYAN CODY, and BANK OF AMER..., take him back over a month. That's a bizarrely long time for him to go without talking to his mom. Maybe they just... text a lot? (Can this phone do that?)

Button-mashing and giving up and closing and reopening the phone eventually gets him back to the main screen. OTHER yields ADDRESS BOOK, CAMERA, GAMES, and TEXT MESSAGING.

His texts are mostly to and from RYAN CODY and are things like "anako wants 2 know if there is gay fifty shades" and "y did u go out with MH laame". GAMES is an ad for the purchase of a golf simulator. CAMERA shows him a blurry, tiny selfie of himself with the fishman, presumably Ryan Cody, both wearing feather boas and eyeliner.

ADDRESS BOOK lists a whole bunch of people he doesn't recognize, a couple of high school friends and names from his figure skating days that he does, and the complete absence of his parents.

Which is too bad, because Eric's starting to really, really want his mother.

Maybe his parents still have the same number? He glances up at the ice, where everyone seems to be heading for the dressing rooms. It can't hurt to try, right?

7-6-2 -

"Hey," probably-Ryan says, "Who're you calling?"

"Just my parents," Eric says, "I figured y'all would take a few - "

"Whoa, WHOA," Ryan says. "You're _calling_ your _parents_?"

"Yes?" Eric says. "I mean, no, should I not do that?"

"Did something happen?" Ryan asks back.

The answer is, of course, yes: something did happen, the instantaneous transformation of an ordinary hockey game into some kind of Disney-brand bizarro-world. But... despite what his phone seems to think, Eric doesn't know this guy. He doesn't want to give away anything he might regret later.

"Nope," he says, flipping the phone closed and sliding it into his pocket. "Everything's fine."

**  
JACK

Bittle is quiet as they get on the bus, shrugging off Shitty asking how he's feeling and Ransom trying to get him excited about his assist in the first period. It's strange to see him so subdued, and without the ever-present phone in his hands. They stow their bags and file onto the bus. Jack usually sits next to Shitty, but Bittle slides in next to him while Shitty's still coming down the aisle.

Bittle doesn't put on his headphones and he doesn't get out his phone. The bus pulls away from the arena and Bittle is still just sitting there silently. Under other circumstances, Jack wouldn't mind that, but this is not a companionable silence. This is uneasy and uncomfortable and it's almost making him a little queasy, like he's the one with the concussion.

Finally, with the engine of the bus rumbling and the team loud with post-game energy, Bittle leans towards Jack and whispers, "Hey, can you help me?"

_Of course_ , Jack wants to say, but he's not sure of that at all. He puts his hand on Bittle's arm. "What's up?"

"I think I... took something," Bittle whispers. "Something bad."

_That's_ a spike to the gut. "Something like _drugs_?" Jack hisses, appalled.

"Ye-es," Bittle says slowly, "Which I guess no one would certainly ever do as we are a college sports team and value clean living except for steroids and creatine."

"You're taking _steroids_?"

"No!" Bittle says. "I don't remember taking _anything_. I mean, a cap of molly at a club, like, two months ago, but that's one heck of a delayed reaction."

"Bittle," Jack says, "What's going on." It comes out in the captain voice.

"I have no idea where I am," Bittle confesses. "Everyone's acting like they know me, like I'm on this team, but I don't know how to play hockey! I've never played a game of hockey in my life!"

"Whoa, do you have amnesia, bro?" Holster interrupts, hanging over the back of the seat behind them. "What's the last thing you remember? Do you think you're still in high school?"

Shitty materializes, ousts the third-liner across the aisle, and leans in too. "Are you in a psychogenic fugue?" he asks. "Wait, you wouldn't be able to answer that if you were."

"I don't think I'm still in high school," Bittle says, looking around warily at the looming hockey players. Jack kind of wants to tell everyone to back off, except he's too relieved that someone else is now involved. "I know it's 2015. I just - this is not my life. A college sports team? I didn't even go to college! I mean, not yet. And I'm a figure skater, not a hockey player."

"You quit figure skating in high school," Shitty says.

"I quit competing," Bittle says, "My senior year, but - "

"No," Shitty says, "I'm pretty sure you said it was earlier than that."

There's a sour taste in Jack's mouth, and a sinking feeling in his chest. He thinks he's starting to get a picture of what might be going on here, and he can't decide if it's more or less horrible than Bittle having a major concussion.

Bittle's phone goes off. Bittle actually jumps a little, like he has no idea why his pocket started loudly singing about who runs the world. (Girls, apparently.)

Bittle fishes the phone out of his pocket and stares at the display dumbly.

"It's my mother," he says. The phone keeps playing. Bittle sits there frozen, looking at it.

"Does my mother call a lot?" Bittle asks plaintively. He sounds lost, about ten years younger, and his face is sort of crumpling. He still doesn't move to answer the phone.

Jack is no stranger to phone calls you just can't deal with right then. He does what he always wishes someone could do for him, and gently takes the phone out of Bittle's hand and declines the call.

"You talk to her after almost every game," Shitty is telling Bittle. "Dude, did you forget your _mom_? Not that I don't sometimes wish - "

"Wait," Bittle says. "Am I not out to my parents? I'm not out to my parents." He looks around wildly. "Am I out to any of you? Oh my god." He's starting to hyperventilate. "I'm in the closet, at college, on a sports team. This is my life if I don't come out. I'm on another Earth. Oh my god. Oh my god."

**  
BITTY

Ryan goes to get changed and returns with Eric's jacket, which he hadn't known to look for. It's lighter weight than his Samwell coat but when they get outside to wait for the bus the air is not as cold and there's no snow still on the ground. Eric looks around semi-desperately for clues about where the hell he is. The Sprint Center, apparently, an enormous glass donut of a building, but where is that?

They board a bus with the other skaters. They're only on the bus for a couple of minutes through downtown-ish streets before they're pulling up in front of a hotel. It's long enough for Eric to determine that a) people call him Ricky here, b) Ryan is Rye, and c) there is some sort of complicated unpleasantness, tangentially involving Eric, going on between a blond guy and a young Japanese-looking woman, who, when asked if she's excited to be his rat tomorrow, tells him that "you're the rat, Danny". (Maybe it's not that complicated.)

There is some awkwardness at the hotel - of course Eric has no idea of his room number, and it turns out (to his commingled disappointment and relief) that he's not sharing a room with Rye. Rye is heading back out on some sort of late-night drugstore run with the Japanese girl, Anako, and wants to know if he can get anything for Eric "besides the usual". _Flour and butter_ , Eric wants to say - he would really like to bake something right about now - but he can't imagine the hotel has a kitchen. He takes the elevator back down to the lobby with Rye and Anako, gives Rye a little wave goodbye (and Rye kisses him again, another familiar little peck, and says he should get some sleep), and, when they're gone, confesses at the front desk that he has completely forgotten his room number, Eric Bittle, B-I-T-T - yes, I have my key here, yes, with Matthew Horowitz, and returns to the elevator with a destination in mind.

It turns out he's right down the hall from Rye's room. Matthew Horowitz (he assumes) is in the shower. Eric deduces from that that the bed with a heap of clothes on it must be his roommate's, and the bed with a blue duffel bag at the foot must be Eric's.

Or, well, Ricky's.

He goes through it thoroughly. Ricky seems to have about a week's worth of winter clothes (a pair of blue jeans, another pair of black jeans, a mix of henleys and button-downs, boxer shorts, and the layered moisture-wicking socks he always liked for skating), mostly, at the present time, dirty and stuffed into a canvas laundry bag. He has a hoodie, two pairs of black figure skating pants, a shiny black shirt that almost feels slippery, and a v-necked purple velour shirt that's the softest item of clothing Eric has ever (sort of) owned. In the bottom of the bag, he finds khaki pants, a red striped tie he got for his sixteenth birthday, his old dress shoes, a pair of flip-flops, two pairs of shorts, three tank tops, a pair of swim trunks, and a Disney On Ice T shirt.

He also has a toiletries kit, a smaller bag containing condoms and lubricant (!), a large manila envelope labeled "important papers", a pair of 2014 novelty glasses, a wrinkled paper map of the Washington Mall and surroundings, a neoprene wrist brace, an ace wrap, a blister kit, a Disney lanyard, a deck of cards, the chargers for the iPod and flip phone, one mitten, and what looks like the tassel from a graduation cap. All together, it's looking not so much like "I packed for this trip" and more like "everything I own is in this duffel bag", especially when he looks through the important papers and sees that they include everything from his high school transcript (except his senior year grades are all wrong and his GPA is much lower than it should be) to Disney On Ice contracts from July 2013 and June 2014; also bank account information, a check book, a postcard from Anako from Paris, copies of his 2013 and 2014 tax returns (he apparently can't be claimed as a dependent by anyone, which is not true back home - he hasn't even been doing his own taxes, his parents have been doing them with theirs), a medical receipt for a wrist x-ray, and a letter with the results of an STD screening (clear for everything).

The "living out of a duffel bag" implication is particularly disturbing considering what's not here: a laptop, his rolling pin, Señor Bunny.

"What the hell, Ricky," he says softly.

Matthew Horowitz chooses that moment to amble out of the bathroom, one towel wrapped around his hips and another scrubbing his hair. If he's surprised to see his roommate standing there talking to himself with the entire contents of his luggage spread out on the bed, he doesn't mention it.

Eric still takes it as a cue to start repacking, trying to put everything back in in roughly the order he had found it. Summer clothes. Shoes. When he picks up the khaki pants, a small spiral-bound notebook slides out of them and falls to the floor.

He picks it up. He flips it open and tries not to squeak. Jackpot: apparently if he doesn't have a vlog or a Twitter, Eric Bittle keeps an old-fashioned handwritten diary.

**  
JACK

Bittle is panicking and Jack, who should be some sort of expert, has no idea what to do. Shitty comes across the aisle and sort of drapes himself against his side, shoving Bittle over into Jack.

"You came out to me your freshman year," Shitty says gently.

"Yeah," Ransom chimes, "Us too, and you took a dude to Winter Screw, so, uh, anyone paying attention probably knows."

For some reason, this seems to upset Bittle even more. "And my _parents_ know that?"

Ransom and Holster exchange glances.

"I don't think so," Shitty says. "When you came out to me, you said it was the first time ever, and if you did it since then, you probably would have told someone?"

Bittle is starting to relax where he's sandwiched between Shitty and Jack. Jack can feel him slump into him. It's... not entirely annoying.

"This is just more proof I'm in a different universe then," Bittle says. "It sounds like I've been making different choices than your Eric for awhile now."

"Dude, no," Ransom says. "I'm sorry, but, there's no such thing as a different universe. You are our Bitty. I don't know what's wrong with your memory, maybe you've got, uh, what Shitty said, but. Crazy goalie theories aside, this isn't a comic book. Right?" He looks at Holster.

Holster nods slowly. "I'm sorry Bits, but - yeah. I just don't think that kind of TV thing happens in real life."

Jack should probably say something.

Bittle un-slumps a little. "But... you're saying it makes more sense that I, what, I just made up the last four years of my life and completely blocked out the real memories, than that my memories are real? Maybe _you_ just don't remember."

Jack should definitely say something.

"Uh, we have all this hockey gear," Holster points out. "And _we_ all remember the same thing."

"How do you know, though?" Even when he's not stoned Shitty can't resist the philosophical argument. "It's not like we regularly cross-check memories. You could be from a slightly different universe and if it never came up, we'd never know."

"Oh dude," Wicklund says, gophering up from the next seat forward, "What if someone could totally be their evil twin and we would just think they had a playoff beard." His winger, sitting next to him, high-fives him.

Okay, they're attracting the attention of the rest of the bus, this is getting out of hand.

"It's not impossible," Jack says softly, but it's enough to get him Bittle's full attention, eyes wide and hopeful.

"This isn't the time," Jack says, nodding meaningfully up and down the aisle of the bus, "But, later? I, uh..." The sour taste is back in his mouth and he can hardly get the words out. "I might... we can... discuss."

**  
BITTY

Eric flips to the last filled-in page first, in case it says something like "am totally planning to switch places with my counterpart from another universe to infiltrate world of college hockey muahahaha". It doesn't; the most recent entries all seem to be about Danny-Anako drama and Danny's irritating hate-on for him.

He turns back to the first page. The diary starts in September of 2013, when Ricky was about to perform in his first real show with Disney On Ice. Eric starts skimming.

An hour later, he's starting to hate the sight of his own handwriting. But he has learned... some things.

Ricky's diary is very full of Rye - how they had been roommates, hooked up, decided they wanted to try a relationship. There are thinly-coded references to sex of, Eric is blushing to be reading this with Matthew snoring right there in the other bed, _a variety of different kinds_. Apparently there is less sex now that they've been split up as roommates by Disney policy, and Ricky and Rye both find this frustrating. Under other circumstances Eric's romantic heart might enjoy knowing there's a version of himself who has a happy relationship instead of pining for a straight (ish?) guy.

But Eric is much more focused on the other story he slowly puts together. He has no idea why Ricky kept on figure skating when he himself, Samwell Eric, gave it up for hockey at fifteen. Ricky never mentions having even considered quitting, although it might just be so far in the past that he wouldn't think to. What does become clear is that Ricky came out to his parents as a senior in high school, became estranged from them, spent the rest of the year bouncing between friends' couches, and got himself an audition for Disney when his parents were not willing to help him with college.

Eric sort of wants to puke. Because of course he's thought about it, every index card he wrote for coming out to Shitty was like a trial run for it. He's always tried to reassure himself that his parents would love and support him no matter what. Finding out that they _hadn't_ , that they _wouldn't_... apparently at some level he must have believed they would, or he wouldn't feel so much like the ground had crumbled underneath him.

He doesn't know exactly what happened. By the time Ricky started the diary, show rehearsals and face character training were much more recent ordeals than longer-ago family heartbreak. At no point does Ricky seem to have any hope of reconciliation - after Disney renewed his contract for another year on tour, Ricky wrote about his hope that if he saved his money and didn't get injured he could skate for Disney long enough to eventually be able to afford to put himself through college, "since Mother refused". He says something about his mother "siding with Coach" that makes Eric suspect that, just like he's always feared, it was his father who really couldn't handle him being gay.

He can't tell whether Coach called him names, whether anybody tried to bargain, whether anybody cried. There are a few references early on to wishing that his mother had packed this or that "when she brought him his bag".

Eric figures he probably cried, given that he's kind of crying just reading about it.

**  
JACK

Bittle's been rooming with Chowder, so Jack sort of expects the group invading his room to include the frogs, but as they wait for the elevator he catches Holster giving a little signal to Nursey, who loops his arms around Dex and Chowder's necks and announces that they absolutely have to go - honestly Jack kind of tunes out there.

Shitty, Ransom, Holster, and Bittle is still more people than he wants to have this conversation with. But then, it's something he had hoped he would never have to talk about. He's only ever said anything about it out loud before to someone twice, both to Kenny, once before everything and once... after. Neither time had gone well.

They troop into Jack's room. Shitty is somehow half-naked and sprawled out on his bed before anyone else has even sat down. Jack's suitcase is on the armchair and Shitty's laptop is charging on the desk chair, so Ransom and Holster look at each other, shrug, and shove Shitty over to make space to sit on his bed. Bittle perches uneasily at the end of Jack's.

"So," Jack says. "Uh." God, he feels like his throat is trying to close up. "I know this sounds crazy, and I didn't think it could happen in, um, college hockey, but. Sometimes in the NHL, things... happen."

He's got four pairs of narrowed eyes and raised eyebrows looking at him.

"I shouldn't even know about it," Jack says, "People don't - obviously people try not to talk about it, except I grew up with it. Some of my father's friends used to tell me stories when I was little, and I thought it was all just tall tales, you know? I didn't think the 1971 Penguins _really_ played a seven-game series with the devil for Michel Brière's soul, or a Bruin we don't name insulted Manon Rhéaume and turned into a woman for three days."

Shitty makes an outraged face. "Some Bruin had the nerve to - "

Jack rolls his eyes. "I don't know," he says. "But." He takes a deep breath. "One night when I was still pretty little, the doorbell rang. Pretty late at night. I was supposed to be asleep, but it woke me up and I came out of my room and looked down through the banisters. It was, um, I don't want to say who, but, a friend of my father's, someone - with the Habs. He had three of the current players with him. Current then, I mean. They were all under a blanket together, like maybe they were holding the middle guy up, and then they took off the blanket and."

All the lights are on, he shouldn't feel like he's telling a goddamn ghost story, but fifteen years later it still freaks him out.

"They were... stuck together. Fused, like they had melted into each other. I almost screamed, except I knew I had to stay quiet. I couldn't hear everything they were saying, but I guess they had... tried something. To make them a better line. And it went wrong."

Bittle's eyes are huge. Ransom and Holster are clutching each other's hands.

"I didn't want to see any more, and I went back to bed. I don't think my father ever knew I had been awake. For the next few days I checked the sports section, until I saw a note that - those guys - were back from some sort of unspecified illness. I insisted on staying up to watch the Habs' next game on TV - I didn't have to argue very much, half the time it was my father trying to get _me_ to watch - and, they were fine. I almost thought it had just been a bad dream, like maybe I had heard they were out and then made it up or something."

Shitty and Ransom are nodding; they obviously like that explanation.

"But, much later, when I was getting close to going up for the draft, Uncle Mario talked to me one time."

He doesn't miss Ransom and Holster mouthing "Uncle Mario" at each other.

"He said he just wanted to give me a little advice, to always try to step on the ice thinking only about playing the game. And especially not to touch any trophies without focus and a pure heart. I asked him why he was telling me this and he told me that sometimes in the NHL, things happen. That he had seen some things that would sound crazy, and he just wanted me to be careful. So... yeah. Maybe it's crazy, but I do believe in ice curses and Cup wishes and stuff like that." Jack sighs. "Now you too have something you can't tell your therapist."

He probably shouldn't be surprised when Shitty flings himself over for the tackle-hug, but somehow it catches him off-guard every time.

"Jack, you crazy mofo," he's muttering, "It takes you four years to tell me this, how are you even - "

And Ransom's talking over him, "So, wait, do you think _ghosts_ \- "

"Ok," Bittle interrupts them both. "I'm, uh, glad someone thinks I'm not crazy. But did you ever hear a story about this thing specifically, like, getting swapped with someone from another world? And was there a way to swap _back_?"

Jack has to tell him that no, he's never heard of this specifically.

"But it's not like Jack knew _everyone_ in the NHL," Shitty points out brightly, climbing off of Jack. "Maybe alternate universes were, like, a Western conference thing."

Bittle looks dubious.

"It's obvious what you need to do," Shitty goes on, and everyone looks at him expectantly. It's not obvious to Jack, but then, sometimes things aren't. "You need to call your dad. Or 'Uncle Mario'" (Jack can hear the quotes) "and ask them how you fix something like this. Your dad probably knows how the, uh, line problem got solved, if nothing else."

_Calisse_. Jack thinks he can actually feel his heart clench in his chest. That'll sound stable, calling to say he thinks his winger's been replaced by his double from an alternate universe. What if he's wrong about them believing in this stuff? He could be back in the mental ward.

He wants to tell Shitty they can handle it themselves, that they don't need to go running for help. But Bittle is looking at him expectantly - _osti_ , it's hitting him suddenly that _this isn't their Bitty_. He can hardly leave his line mate stranded in some messed-up world where he doesn't even play hockey.

"Yes," he says, "I'll call. But it's too late tonight. I'll call tomorrow."

"Sure," Shitty says kindly. "Meanwhile! I'm gonna get - hey, what do you go by at home? Are you just Eric? You're probably not Bitty."

"Ricky," the other Bittle says.

"I'm gonna brief Ricky on our season so he sounds less like a head trauma victim in need of the ER," Shitty announces. Which is a good idea, and Jack should have thought of it; should probably volunteer, being the captain and all. If only Ricky wasn't so disconcerting.

"I'm turning in," he mumbles, and Shitty takes Ricky off somewhere else, and Ransom and Holster shuffle off arguing about ghosts.

Jack brushes his teeth and pulls on pajamas and tries to will himself to sleep. But he lies awake, long after Shitty comes back, thinking about Bitty lost in some other world. If nobody there knows about ice curses, they must think he's crazy, or concussed... he might be feeling so alone and scared right now, Bitty of all people should never have to feel like that... not Bitty.

**  
BITTY

Someone's kissing him awake. This is not a standard wakeup in the Haus. The person pulls away as Eric opens his eyes and looks up into hazel ones just inches away, and it all rushes back to him: Rye, Disney, reading Ricky's diary.

"Matt let me in," Rye murmurs, "They put away breakfast at 8:30 here, you better get down there if you want to get anything."

Eric blinks. "Uh... are you going?"

Rye kisses his forehead. "I've got call, you slacker. Don't worry, I'll grab something from crafty." He hops off the side of the bed and picks up a bag from the floor. "Hey, listen, if you're gonna do laundry - I don't know if you were planning to or not, but, if you do, do you mind taking mine? My quarters are in there and they had the little bottles of All so I got us one and I think the Lebedevs want it after us."

"I'm not sure," Eric says cautiously.

"No, sure," Rye says, "It's not like you were planning for Jan to boot you today. God, you must want to kill Danny."

Eric hums something noncommittal and climbs out of bed. Rye grabs him into a full-bodied hug.

"It's been forever since we had a free morning," he whines into Eric's hair. Rye has a good four or five inches on him and Eric's face fits comfortably into his shoulder.

He's belatedly starting to wonder if it's kind of creepy to not tell your alternate-you's boyfriend that you're the wrong you. The consent lecture at orientation week had talked a lot about alcohol and not at all about alternate universes.

Eric pulls away and fumbles in his bag for clothes. He waits for a moment for Rye to turn away, but, oh, of course, he's not going to. Eric has changed in front of teammates a few hundred times but this feels completely different. Probably because _appreciative watching_ goes against locker room code. Eric can feel himself blushing and is glad he slept in boxers and can pull on jeans without having to strip completely. Taking off his T-shirt feels awkward enough. He's tempted by the purple velour shirt, but what if it's only for special occasions or something. He picks a henley.

Shoes, and keycard, and he follows Rye out into the hall. Anako is standing there waiting, holding a canvas bag. "I heard you might be doing laundry?" she says. "I don't want to impose, but if I could just throw myself on your mercy, I never managed to do mine in St. Louis, so... your little chef will love you?" She clasps her hands imploringly.

Eric hopes the hotel has washing machines.

**  
JACK

... _ring, ring_...

"A'lo?" (Maybe it's too early. Was it too early to call?)

"Um, bonjour, this is Jack. Jack Zimmermann?"

"Jack. Are you okay?" (He hates the way Mario's voice goes instantly concerned. Sometimes he wonders how many years it will take until that's not the first thing people think.)

"Yes. Yes, I'm fine. But I'm calling with... a question."

"Okay, Jack. About choosing a team?" (Mario is in some ways a riskier choice to call, being a current owner. But the alternative is calling his father. And it's not like he wants to sign with the Penguins.)

"No, no. It's - a friend of mine, he, uh, has a problem."

"An emergency? Is your friend safe right now?" (He can't tell whether Mario believes him, that he's not the one with the problem. Mario's always had good talking-to-rookies game.)

"Not an emergency, no."

"Is this a lawyer problem?" (Shitty would probably be thrilled if it turned out lawyers were masters of alternate-universe travel.)

"No. It's more of the kind of problem I thought only happened in the NHL. Not college hockey."

Mario makes a sort of eengh noise. "Would we be talking about the kind of problem that will sound unbelievable if you tell me what it is?" (Oh, _crisse_ that's a relief.)

"Yes! I mean, yes. Should I - "

"No," Mario interrupts. "All we have here is superstition, but one of mine is that you try not to bring more people into it than you have to. If it's not an emergency, why don't I give you some... general advice and see if you can do anything with it." (Jack has never liked superstitions. As opposed to, you know, routines. But Mario is the expert here.)

"Ice curses you can sometimes break with something the opposite of ice," Mario tells him. "Fire, or salt. Immersing in salt water has sorted some people out. Sometimes teammates can help - if it's a forward, their line mates, for defensemen their partner obviously. Goalies... goalies are difficult."

"It's not a goalie," Jack says unevenly. It's a little overwhelming to actually hear Mario say "ice curse" out loud.

"Good, good. To be honest, Jack, if there's no immediate danger the safest thing to do may be to simply wait it out. I know these situations can be distressing - are you doing okay?" (And of course, they're back to whether he's okay.)

"Yes, I - yes. Thank you. I'll let you know if it - when it's sorted out."

"Sure, Jack. I'd like to hear that. And maybe we can catch up a little, I'm sure you're preoccupied right now."

"Yes, thank you."

_click_

**  
BITTY

The hotel does not have washing machines that guests can use. Eric asks at the front desk, after seeing Rye and Anako off onto the bus and snagging a quick bowl of cereal from the continental breakfast. The hotel doesn't have a kitchen guests can use either. So much for the lure of soothing, soothing pie. He's braced for three strikes, but his third question succeeds: the hotel does have a business center with computers and wonderful, vital internet.

An hour later, he's hating himself for getting his hopes up. WikiHow does not have an entry for "how do I get back to my own universe" - the closest match is "how to become enlightened". (Which could be worse... his top result for "get back to my own dimension" is "how to measure chest size".) Google is happy to point him to hundreds of pages about parallel universes and "multiverse shift" and things like that, but they all sound like nonsense, or, well, like fancy versions of visualization exercises. None of them seem to suggest you can actually just go in the blink of an eye from your own world to another one. He finds recaps of a bunch of TV shows and movies where something like that happens, and several articles about a Spanish woman who claimed to be from a parallel universe. He gets excited about that one until he realizes that all the articles end the same way: she has no idea how it happened and can't get back home.

There's got to be a different way this can end.

Eric decides to take a break from problem-solving to see what else he can learn about Ricky. Ricky has a total lack of public internet presence - his high school vlogs have been taken down, he doesn't have a Twitter that Eric can find, and searching variations on his name only gives him hits that are definitely other people.

Time to dig deeper. Ricky had written his gmail password inside the back cover of the diary. For some reason logging in as him feels like even more of an invasion than reading his diary had been - god, or _kissing his boyfriend_ , Eric needs to think about his priorities - but he's trapped in the guy's universe, this is no time to be squeamish.

Apparently he mostly uses his gmail for... paperless statements. He's got neatly managed labels for his credit card bill, his bank statements, the receipts from putting more money on his phone's pay-as-you-go plan. There's almost nothing personal. An exchange, back in July 2014, with a Diana Cody. She thanks him for his "lovely note" and reminds him that she was hoping to get the recipe for "that fantastic pie"; Ricky writes back to her (calling her "Mrs. Cody") with the recipe for his MooMaw's chess pie, saying again how much he appreciated the chance to use her kitchen.

Eric remembers this from the diary, Ricky going to visit Rye at his parents' house during the summer break between tours. Ricky had written "BAKED!!!!" in his diary with four exclamation points, and the next few entries afterwards had a lot of "I miss baking" and "why does this kitchenette have a stovetop but NO OVEN". Eric isn't sure any of his friends would believe him, if he told them there was a universe where he'd made only one solitary pie since the equivalent of coming to Samwell.

He frowns at the computer. Do his Samwell friends even exist in this universe? It would be an easy matter of Googling to find out. He's just not sure he wants to know. It hurts to picture them all still at Samwell, just fine without him, and it hurts just as much to imagine that they are missing him somehow, nobody in the Haus keeping track of birthdays or taking care of the frogs. Or maybe everyone's story is different here. Jack could have gone first in the draft and be leading the league. Or when he overdosed, he could have - 

Eric claps a hand over his own mouth, not that he was saying anything, but sure that it was bad luck even to think that. No. Definitely not. And he doesn't need to look, because he's sure everyone is perfectly fine. He pokes around his Google account some more instead. Oh look, he has a Google calendar, and, hey, it's got all their tour dates and showtimes! He's apparently in Kansas City right now, with two matinees today, two tomorrow, late afternoon shows on Monday and Tuesday, a double matinee on Wednesday, Thursday he has off for "load out" and Friday he's riding the bus to Dallas.

Yikes. Eric has no idea how many days he can be out "sick" before they fire him. But he can't possibly skate routines he's never even seen. If he's truly stuck here for the rest of his life, he should probably just quit now and live off his savings until he can figure out a new plan. If there's some chance he can get back to his own life - putting Ricky back here? where is Ricky anyways, is he at Samwell?? - then Ricky won't want to lose his job to Eric's incompetence.

He really wishes the hotel had a guest-usable kitchen - it would be so much easier to think about this with a spoon or a rolling pin in his hands. For lack of anything better to do, he looks up directions to the nearest laundromat, then bus schedules to get there. Okay. Not as good as cooking, but at least he can do something useful with himself, and maybe he'll think of something.

**  
JACK

There's just time before they get on the bus to tell the others what Mario said. "Fire or salt?" Ricky repeats dubiously. "What exactly is getting set on fire, here?"

"Oh!" Holster says, "When I was little I got a wart on my hand and my parents had me draw a picture of the wart and then crumple it up and throw it away to make the wart go away. Maybe you could, like, draw a picture of your being here, and then burn it."

"Oh, like wearing Bitty's hockey gear?" Ransom says.

"NO," Jack says, and then makes himself lower his voice. "This isn't a game. Think of it like visualization. Burn a picture of Bittle in hockey gear and maybe our Bittle never plays again, or never played in the first place."

"Salt water is just a short drive away once we get back," Shitty says cheerfully, "That sounds pretty harmless. What do you think: Carson? Nantasket?"

"Wait," Ricky says, "You want me to swim in the ocean, in Massachusetts, in March? You guys still have snow on the ground!"

"It'll be invigorating!" Shitty says. "Also if you switch back then I guess you'll be gone and Bitty will be cold?"

"I'd still be the one going in," Ricky complains. "I think being dunked in ice water is technically torture."

"Look," Jack says, "It's just an idea, we're not going to force you. But Mario did say your line mates might be able to help, so if this sounds right to Shitty, I think it's worth a try."

They're all quiet on the bus. Ricky keeps himself busy playing with Bittle's phone - he's got his headphones in and seems to be going systematically through all of Bittle's playlists passing silent judgment on his taste. Jack has reading he's supposed to be doing but he can't concentrate at all. Could this really be as easy as taking Ricky to the beach? They could have Bitty back by dinnertime. Jack flashes back to Bittle's hazeapalooza, how he'd shivered on the ice. They're going to need to have some warm blankets or something, he's seen the pictures of slurpee waves. Poor Ricky.

Of course he would do it himself without a second thought, if it meant getting Bitty back. He would do it for anyone on the team, he's pretty sure.

(Maybe he would do it a little faster for Bitty.)

**  
BITTY

There's something really soothing about the tumble tumble tumble of a bank of washing machines. The laundromat has shiny industrial front-loaders, nothing like the top-loading rust bucket in the Haus basement, and Ricky and Rye and Anako are all different enough sizes that Eric can sort their clothes into proper dark and delicate and denim loads without fear that he'll never get them un-mixed again.

He was on the ice, when he got checked, and he was on the ice when he woke up in Disney-land. That's what he keeps coming back to. He didn't just end up in some random life where he worked in a kitchen or a daycare or something, he was still in skates, just different ones. Maybe all Bittles everywhere skate, but Eric doesn't think that's true: if Ricky can live with baking as a rare indulgence, there's probably an Eric who goes to a public rink once or twice a year and circles around. Maybe even in rental skates.

Maybe if he can get back on the ice, he can switch back.

There's an easy way to get back on the ice. All he has to do is show up for his job tomorrow. There's a warm up before they let the audience in. He puts on Ricky's skates, gets on the ice, and Ricky is back in them in time to go through with the show. Visualization, right? He can visualize that happening. The washers finish and he moves the loads to the dryers, and the whole time they tumble tumble tumble, he visualizes.

**  
JACK

They get off the bus at Faber and walk back to the Haus. Shitty and Jack show Ricky upstairs to Bittle's room and there's a sort of expectant pause where Jack realizes they're both waiting for Ricky to drop his bag and race back down to the kitchen for just-got-home baking. But he doesn't, of course, because he's _not Bitty_ , as hard as that seems to be for Jack to remember.

Instead, he sees something barely sticking out from under the pillow, and pounces on it to pull it out. It seems to be some kind of very worn stuffed animal.

"Oh my lord, Señor Bunny!" Ricky is exclaiming. "I haven't seen you in - " He lets out a long, shaky breath. "Wow." He cradles the stuffed rabbit in his arm while he walks around the room, looking at Bittle's bookshelf, the pictures and posters, the laptop on his desk.

It feels like a personal sort of moment, so Jack steps away quietly. He hears Ricky murmuring to Shitty, something about never even filling out his applications. Jack closes his door and starts unpacking. He's surprised when someone knocks.

It's Ricky, looking nervous. Jack steps back, eyebrows raised, and Ricky closes the door behind him.

"I have to ask," he says, lacing and unlacing his fingers, "Are you and this world's Eric secretly... together?"

"No," Jack says immediately. "Why would you think that."

"You keep looking at me," Ricky says, shrugging, "And you're _completely_ my type. I guess I don't know if that would be the same for him or not."

"I'm sorry for looking at you," Jack says stiffly. What does that even mean, has he been looking too much?

"No, no," Ricky says, laughing a little. "I don't mind. Like I said, completely my type. And... I could tell you didn't want to make that phone call, but you did, and," he takes a step closer to Jack, "It just seems like there's something _there_ , you know?" He waves his hand between them. Another step closer, and he's way too close for a stranger to stand, except he's not a stranger, he's _Bittle_ , except he's not. Jack can't look away from his eyes.

Ricky slowly reaches up to Jack's shoulders and slides his hands behind his neck. He raises himself onto his tiptoes, and he's moving so slowly, it would be easy for Jack to step away. But he doesn't, he doesn't move, and Ricky brushes his lips softly against Jack's.

Jack closes his eyes, and he can feel Ricky smile before he kisses him again, deeper but still so slowly.

God, he's so warm. It's been forever since Jack did this, kissed someone new - kissed anyone other than Parse, and that's something from another world itself. Kenny kisses like it's a face-off. Bittle is sort of soft and welcoming even while he's the one pressing into Jack. Jack can't say he's never thought about this, about kissing Bittle - he's always imagined he would be shy. Hesitant. But Bittle isn't at all hesitant, teasing at Jack's lips with his tongue, crowding against him chest to chest, and... this isn't Bittle. Bitty. This is Ricky.

Jack drops his hands from where they've somehow ended up clutching Ricky's hips, and tears himself away.

"I don't do this," he tells Ricky, reminding himself.

Bittle would probably apologize, or run off to bake something. Ricky just shrugs. "Okay," he says, "Thanks for helping me, uh, clarify the situation, anyways." He's pink, and biting his lip, but he seems rather pleased with himself. He _looks_ exactly like Bittle, and Jack is never going to be able to unsee what he looks like freshly kissed. "Shitty says we're leaving for the beach in half an hour, I assume you want to come along," he adds. "Even if we're not, uh. Like that."

"Yeah," Jack says, "Of course."

**  
BITTY

Eric buys a sandwich on the way back to the hotel - taking the money out of Ricky's wallet feels a little like stealing, but he guesses the sandwich is going into Ricky's body, so it's all fair. (Ricky's hair is longer, and he's got different skate calluses, so.) Once he's back and the laundry is folded into three neat piles on his bed, he has no idea what to do with himself. He can't work on his class assignments, or read Twitter, or bake. Now that he has a plan, he just wants to get on with it.

**  
JACK

Holster tries to call shotgun on the way out to Shitty's car, but Jack ruthlessly preempts him. He's got towels and the blankets from his bed, it's an armful, he's not jamming into the back. (With Ricky.)

Shitty gives them a long explanation of how he chose the beach - some combination of steepness, so Ricky won't have to wade in as far, and privacy, so that they won't attract curious passers-by. Or concerned ones; Shitty goes off on a digression about which Massachusetts legal statutes apply to off-season swimming. He thinks the real problem is that it might look like they're recklessly endangering Bittle. That's all Jack needs, an arrest for hazing.

He turns around to check on Ricky once or twice. He looks nervous but determined. It's an expression Jack's seen on Bittle's face over and over on the ice.

When they get to Quincy, Jack makes Shitty stop at a Starbucks so Bittle can have a giant mocha latte waiting for him. Ricky laughs at it - apparently he drinks his coffee black with sugar - but Jack's pretty sure "freezing ocean swim" is a chocolate and whipped cream occasion.

They decide that Ransom and Holster will stay in the car and keep the engine running and the heat turned way up. Ricky will strip down in the car and run out in his boots and Holster's jacket, which is two inches longer than Bittle's. There is a debate over whether Ricky gets to keep on his underpants - Shitty's advocating nudity, Jack is adamant that Bittle doesn't need to come back to indecent exposure charges. Ricky finally cuts in and says he's pro-underwear, that Jack's source hadn't said anything about maximum humiliation and he'll take them off in the water if they really think it matters, but not before.

They get out and run. There's snow crunching under their feet down to the high-tide line, then pale sand that doesn't look much warmer.

Ricky yanks his boots off and immediately starts hopping from foot to foot.

"You better get it over with," Shitty advises.

"Right," Ricky says. "Well, uh. Nice meeting you guys and I hope this works and I never see you again."

He whips off the jacket and hands it to Shitty - Jack's holding a blanket ready - and takes his first step into the water. And shrieks.

"Oh god oh god," he's muttering, moving steadily deeper, "My feet are already numb, this is insane, why couldn't I play hockey in Florida?" Jack can hear him starting to hyperventilate from the cold.

"Just throw yourself in," Shitty says, "Get it over with."

"Not d-d-d-deep enough," Ricky calls back. He's almost half a rink away by the time he gives up on wading and dives forward.

"JESUS FUCKING CHRIST," he comes up hollering, "FUUUUUCK!"

"Are you Bitty?" Shitty yells.

"NO," Ricky says. "GODDAMMIT."

Jack lets out a breath he didn't realize he was holding.

"You might not have been all under at once!" Shitty says, "I think your foot was sticking out! Try again?"

Ricky gives him the finger, but plunges down again.

This time he doesn't stand all the way back up, just stays bobbing in a sort of crouch.

"WHO THE HELL THOUGHT THIS WAS THE OPPOSITE OF ICE?!" he bellows at them.

"Third time's the charm?" Shitty shouts. "Actually in many baptismal rituals three - "

Ricky sinks backwards and is gone.

He doesn't come back up immediately.

It suddenly hits Jack that this is _dangerous_ , that people die from hypothermia. Why hadn't he just flown them to Florida or something? It's not like he couldn't. He's thinking that, and stripping off his coat, and starting to unlace his boots - why is he wearing lace-up boots - when he sees Bittle's head break the surface again.

"I'M OKAY," he tells them, and stands up to start slogging his way back to the beach. At some point in the water he's lost his underwear.

"It didn't work," he reports once he's closer. Jack had already guessed that; he figures if they had swapped back Bittle would have come up much more disoriented. Ricky stumbles through the last few meters of surf, Jack wraps him up in the blanket, and he and Shitty grab him by the elbows and hustle him back to the car as fast as they can move him. They toss him into the back, and Ransom and Holster, who have stripped down to T-shirts, hop out of the front, climb into the back on either side, and start toweling him off.

"I'll go get his boots," Jack says to no one in particular, and flees.

When he comes back, Ricky is huddled under the other blanket with Ransom and Holster tight around him. He's taking methodical gulps of mocha latte.

"Bro body heat sharing powers activate!" Ransom tells Jack. He's maybe staring a little, he guesses.

"So that was a bust," Shitty announces unnecessarily, once they're back on the road to Samwell.

"I can't believe I did that for nothing," Ricky says glumly. He's stopped chattering, which is either a good sign or a bad one. He looks pink and alert, at least.

"Anybody have any other ideas?" Shitty asks.

"There's always Holster's fire thing?" Ransom suggests.

"I want to bring in Lardo," Shitty says, cutting off Jack's start of an objection to Ransom. "Yeah, I know 'Uncle Mario' said not to involve extra people, but Lardo is a) an artist, and good at symbolism stuff, b) our manager and good at _managing us_ , and c) the only person who's going to know what I'm talking about if I start talking about liminality and mimesis."

"Excuse me," Holster says. "I took that soc-anth colloquium."

"Except maybe Holster," Shitty amends, "But, Holster, do you _want_ to hear my thoughts about whether we're looking for a liminal or postliminal rite here?"

Holster shrugs. "If you think it'll help."

"My instincts are saying Lardo," Shitty says, "And I know my instincts were also saying 'lets make Bittle freeze his nuts off in the Bay', but I feel like we're learning as we go, here, and what I have learned is that this is more complicated than a simple "apply salt water and shake" sort of thing, and, yes, we are all beautiful souls here, but no offense, I'll put Lardo against any of us for grappling with _complicated_."

"Sure," Ricky says, "Why not. I have no idea who that is but it doesn't sound immediately painful or humiliating for me, so, sure."

"Sure," Jack says.

He's not sure how he feels about their little outing. Mostly stupid, that all too familiar "I can't believe I had my hopes up" hindsight. But also conflicted, because his brain is always the permanent enemy of his better judgment, and his first thought when Ricky came up for the third time (after "oh good, I don't have to go in after him") was "now I get another shot".

**  
BITTY

He has free time and the internet, so he finds a place to suggest for dinner. Actually three, a Lebanese place, a grill, and pho; he has no idea what Rye might be in the mood for after a show.

When Rye gets back, knocking on Eric's door, it's with the announcement that he's gotten Anako to invite Matt with the girls to dinner, "trading on the chance you did her laundry, which, oh, look, win!" He picks up said stack of clothes and moves it over to Matt's bed, then does the same with his own.

"Um," Eric says. "So I thought maybe pho, or Lebanese - "

Rye sits down on the edge of the bed. He's somehow gotten hold of Eric's hands, and he tugs, gently. "Lebanese," Rye says, mock-thoughtful, "What is that, oral and a moving van?"

Eric is now standing between his spread knees. "Aren't you hungry after the show?" he squeaks out.

"Dinner later," Rye says, "Ricky now." And tilts his head up to be kissed.

Eric shouldn't: he's not Ricky. But it just seems rude to turn down a request like that. And Rye is so tempting. Eric has kissed a couple of guys at Samwell - end of the date, goodnight kinds of kisses. He's honestly kind of baffled as to how you're supposed to go from that to a horizontal-on-a-bed situation. Oh, he knows the magical phrase "come back to my room?" - it's been addressed to him, even, although never from anyone he'd actually like to accept - but once you're there, how do you... make things happen? Do you just try something? What if you guess wrong? Eric is almost halfway through his time at Samwell and he has a few kisses and a hopeless crush to show for it.

Rye is a sure thing. He's good looking, and sweet, and Eric could do things with him that he's been thinking about doing for literally _years_ , and then Eric _is_ kissing Rye, leaning down and sort of exploring his mouth.

Rye is still holding his hands, and he squeezes them. Eric squeezes back. Rye scoots a little bit forward on the bed, rocking his hips into Eric's thighs, and, okay, this is the closest to someone else's erection that Eric has ever been. He makes a muffled sound into Rye's mouth.

Rye lets go of Eric's hands and slides his own up Eric's shirt. Eric has never gotten much reaction from his nipples, but, wow, Rye obviously knows them better than he does himself, because he did not know they did that. He's more or less panting into Rye's mouth now, completely losing the rhythm and direction of the kiss.

"Hey," Rye mumbles. He pulls his hands back from Eric's chest, octopuses his arms and legs around him, and topples them back onto the bed.

Eric, who isn't expecting this at all, yeeps and smacks his head into Rye's. It's like falling into cold water. What was he thinking? He can't have sex with Rye - the flip side of Rye knowing his body is that _he's supposed to know Rye's_. They're in a long-term relationship: Ricky probably has _skills_. Eric has _no idea what he's doing_.

"Ow," he says belatedly, and rolls off of Rye to rub his head, more or less where they collided. "Sorry, that was kind of... mood killing?" It's a stupid excuse, he's still rock hard in his jeans, but maybe part of having a good relationship is knowing when not to call your boyfriend on his weirdness, because Rye doesn't.

**  
JACK

Jack would very much like to flee to his room and argue with his brain, but Shitty insists that he has to do most of the explaining to Lardo. When he finishes, "... so Shitty thought you might have some ideas," she rips off a big bite of her pizza with her teeth and chews at him silently for a moment, like maybe she's wondering if the psych ward has room for five.

"Seems like a physics department problem," she finally says.

Ransom shakes his head. "Science is over here with its fingers in its ears, bro."

She takes another mouthful of pizza.

"Okay," she says, "So, I guess what I would ask is, why?"

"Why does science have its fingers - "

"Why Bittle," she says, rolling her eyes the way she does at all of them constantly. "Why now, why this."

"You don't think that's just artificially applying a narrative to a freak accident?" Shitty asks.

"Maybe," she shrugs. "But I've done some of my best paintings that way." She gestures. "Visually, parallel lines aren't going to touch at all. So you have to ask, are these straight lines that have always been heading for each other, crossing at one point and then separating, or is this a line and a circle, with two points of intersection. Or two circles."

"Do we get to decide that?" Shitty asks.

"How the hell would I know," Lardo says. "Ugh. If I was painting something _representational_ ," like it's a dirty word, "Then, he's a traveler," pointing at Ricky, "So I show him carrying something. Is it something he just found? Something he's been looking for a place to set down? And I play up the duality, positive/negative space, maybe one of them is traveling _towards_ and one _away_."

Jack isn't sure what to make of any of that (although he wants to think about artificial narratives with respect to photography at some point), and Ricky's giving Lardo a blatant side-eye, but Shitty is of course looking at her like she just broke a tied-up game.

To be completely honest, Jack gets a little tired of Shitty's epic Lardo crush. There's no good reason he can't _do_ something about it, so it's just... recreational pining. Of course Shitty would probably say there's no reason Jack is doomed to be alone either. Jack knows better: he knows better than to ever get involved with someone on his team again, after Parse, and he's always known better than to risk hooking up with someone who might be out for a scoop on Zimmermann Jr.

And that's why he can't stop looking over at Ricky. He's sure he wouldn't have started anything, but after the guy kissed him like that, who could blame him for thinking about it? Ricky is perfect: only here in passing, and (they all hope) going back to another world where that world's Jack Zimmermann can truthfully say he's never even met him, if Ricky tried to sell his story. That he looks exactly like Jack's very-off-limits teammate is like the filling in the pie.

Jack is still thinking about making his move when Ricky excuses himself, claiming exhaustion. That's okay; it seems unlikely he's going to just switch back during the night.

**  
BITTY

Eric could have a dick in his mouth, and instead he's eating pho.

It's crass, but once he's thought of it that way he can't un-think it. Rye's dick would have so obviously been an eager volunteer for Eric's oral curiosity, and he has no idea when he might get another chance like that. Fantasies of Jack letting him line up with the Zimmermann puck bunnies are ludicrous - a _complicated_ relationship with the legendary Kent Parson, that Eric still has no idea whether he's completely off-base about, does not at all imply any interest in his random college-softy teammate. (He's pretty sure there isn't even an alternate universe where he's dating Jack. Although if there was, he would definitely not be eating pho.)

He's going home in the morning, he tells himself: soon this will all just be a strange dream.

**  
JACK

Sunday morning with no Bittle breakfast in the kitchen is grim. Everyone eats their cereal so mournfully it's like a goddamn wake.

**  
BITTY

He's doing this: he's reporting for call, and he's going to lace up his skates, get on that ice, and then "magic on ice", as they say, and he'll be back where he belongs. He hopes.

It all seems to be going reasonably. It's not hard to shuffle along with the other skaters through breakfast, the short bus ride, the ID check at the backstage entrance.

The Disney schedule gives him ten minutes of warm-up skate before he has to go back for costume and makeup. He really hopes it doesn't take ten minutes.

Skates on. Clomp clomp clomp. Guards off - and -

well, here he is on the ice.

**  
JACK

It's the easiest thing in the world: he knocks on Bittle's door, Ricky answers; Ricky smiles, Jack steps in and closes the door behind him.

And then he's kissing him. Devouring his mouth might be more accurate. Ricky's hands flutter for a moment, like he's not sure what to do with them, before they settle into Jack's hair. He can picture Bitty reacting just like that, that little flutter. But he shoves that thought aside. This is Ricky, the one he can have. _Crisse_ , it's been so long.

He breaks the kiss and grabs the hem of Ricky's shirt, raising his eyebrows. Ricky nods, and Jack peels it off of him in one smooth move, except for a minor collar/chin problem. Ricky grins at him and Jack shucks off his own shirt. Ricky closes in like he expects more kissing but Jack drops to his knees and presses his face into his torso.

God, he's so skin-hungry. Shitty constantly on display and everyone bare and glistening in the locker room all the time, and he's not even supposed to look, let alone touch. He hockey-hugs through base layers and pads and jerseys and gloves and that's supposed to be enough. Even when he's seen Parse it's been all zippers and pushed-up shirts, how long has it been since he actually had this, skin to skin. He's nuzzling into Ricky's chest now, mouthing down to his abs. His arms around Ricky and Ricky's hands on his back can't possibly be enough. Parse used to tease him sometimes that what he really wanted was the whole team naked in a pile and Jack on the bottom. It wasn't true, not really - it had been hotter than hell, Parse whispering in his ear how they'd take turns - but all he really wants is to be naked in a bed with someone, wrapped together under the covers.

Today he can. Still on his knees, he starts walking them across the room, Bittle shuffling backwards obediently. Bittle is so delightfully easy to manhandle. Not that Jack lets himself do it, but it would be so easy. To pick him up in the kitchen and set him down on the counter and dive into his neck. To pull him down onto Jack's lap on the couch, tell him to let the dishes wait. Jack could probably carry him up to bed bridal-style. Taken by the impulse, he jumps up to his feet, scoops up a surprised and flailing Bittle - yeah, he could totally do this on the stairs - and tosses him the rest of the way onto the bed, and Jack is following right behind, laying down over him, chest to chest, kissing him deeply.

It's amazing. It's perfect. He can't believe he gets to do this, a Bittle that's safe, like he's here just for him...

" _Osti_ ," Jack swears, and rolls off.

**  
BITTY

Halfway into the warmup, Eric accepts that it didn't work and he's not about to magically get home. He's been skating around so that he's not standing there stupidly. He's just started another run of edges and crossovers when it hits him: when he'd crossed over the first time, he'd been on the ice in both places. Of course he's not going to get home if he's on the ice here but not _there_.

If he's not switching back, he needs to get off the ice. He can't possibly skate the show. He's saved from faking an injury by Jan descending on him. He fails some sort of mood-and-manners test, he doesn't even care. He just wants to go think. It's all gelling in his head like a phase transition, like one of those recipe steps where a miracle happens and suddenly a sticky mess is perfect candied pecans.

By the time he gets his skates off, he doesn't just know how he's going to get home, he knows why he's here in the first place.

**  
JACK

Haus beds are narrow; Jack rolls right off and falls to the floor with a thump.

" _Calisse_ ," he says on the floor, covering his eyes with his arm. "I am so, so sorry."

He takes a brief look from under his arm. Ricky is looking down over the edge of the bed in concern.

"I think this is my fault," Jack says, "I think I somehow wished you here. Maybe I had a Cup wish left from when I touched it as a baby, I don't know. Maybe I just wanted a version of you I could touch."

"A version of - the other me," Ricky says.

"I've been telling myself it'll be like it never happened," Jack says, "But that's bullshit, _I'll_ still be here. You've got his face. I was kissing you in his bed. I was never going to be able to just - forget." He's starting to shake. God, why does he always have to fuck it up?

He hears Ricky climb down from Bitty's bed. He feels him settle next to him, close enough that they're touching, but down by his knees where it doesn't have heat.

"Jack," Ricky says hesitantly, "If it was your wish that brought me here, then, wouldn't that mean that we should, uh, go with it? To get me back home, and your Eric back here?"

Jack feels much closer at this point to throwing up than possibly getting it up. "I have an addictive personality," he forces out. "Any time I'm telling myself 'just one' or 'this once won't hurt', that's - not good."

"But - "

"I was _already mixing you up in my head_ ," Jack snarls. It's true; for a few moments there, he hadn't been thinking of Ricky at all. Just Bittle.

Ricky puts his hand on his shoulder, soothing.

"Okay," he says, "Hey. It's okay. I've been told I'm irresistible."

It makes Jack snort and eases the horrible twist in his stomach.

"Can I just - lay down with you?" Ricky asks.

Jack nods and Ricky arranges himself, lying down and tugging Jack's arm away from his eyes so he can use it as a pillow.

They end up staring at the ceiling together in silence. Ricky is warm and solid and eventually Jack realizes he's stopped shaking.

**  
BITTY

Eric glances at a few clipboards on the way out of backstage. Bless Disney and their rigid timetables and spelled-out procedures. He opens a few doors and checks out a few rooms of the vast arena substructure. He swings back through the public part, past still-shuttered concessions stands and carts of Disney merchandise, to the box office, where they work some database magic and confirm that he hasn't used his employee comp tickets yet. He walks back to the hotel.

Rye was a distraction, is the thing. Eric started kissing him and lost track of the game. But this has never been about sex.

**  
JACK

"So what are we going to do now?" Ricky asks, and Jack is saved from answering that by Shitty pounding on the door.

"Haus emergency, Lardo thinks _Hedwig_ is a better critique of masculinity than _Mulan_ , you gotta watch both if you want to vote, five minutes!"

**  
BITTY

He swings by the business center for a little internet research, just in case his intuitions are wrong. There's a public skating rink even closer than the laundromat had been, but it doesn't open until 10 am. That's not going to cut it, the team has practice tomorrow at 6. Eric was pretty sure you couldn't find public skating at that hour, but it's good to check.

Anything else he might look up would just be stalling. He goes up to Ricky's room and changes into the purple velour shirt, so he can leave with no regrets.

He flips open Ricky's phone. He dials a number he knows by heart.

**  
JACK

"Look, bro, 'Origin of Love' is a tearjerker, no argument, but you'll be singing 'I'll Make A Man Out Of You' in the shower."

**  
BITTY

"Hello, Suzanne Bittle speaking."

"Mother?"

A gasp. "... Dicky? Dicky, is that you?"

"Yes, it's me."

"Oh my Lord, Dicky! Oh. Oh my. Where - where are you? Are you safe? Have you been - "

"I'm safe, mother. I'm fine. I'm on tour with Disney On Ice. It's, um, good."

"Not a day has gone by since - that last time - that I haven't thought about you. I swear on a stack of Bibles, I would have smacked my hand over your daddy's mouth before he ever said a word about your lifestyle, if I knew - "

"Mother - "

"When we heard you'd left Madison, I about thought I'd die of worrying about you. I am so - "

"Wait," he interrupts. Because what she's saying isn't for him. "I want to hear it," he says, "But not right now." She's quiet. "Um. In person maybe? We'll be in Atlanta next month, I can, um. Leave comp tickets for you and Coach at the box office. And maybe coffee after?"

"Your daddy too?" she asks tentatively.

"If he's willing."

"He didn't think you'd ever forgive him," she says, sniffling.

"I don't - I don't know if I'm ready to say it," Eric says, crossing his fingers, "But I think I'm ready to talk to him, and we can, um. Start there."

"Okay," she says, voice catching.

"There's, uh. Before - y'all should know, I, ah, have a boyfriend."

"I don't care," she gets out, really crying now. "I only ever wanted a good life for you and if you're safe and somebody loves you - "

Eric clutches his phone helplessly. Suddenly her sobbing gets muffled, like someone's taking the phone from her.

"That really you, Dicky?" Gruff as ever.

"Yessir."

"You made your mother cry."

"Yessir."

Silence for a moment.

"Was a good thing you did calling."

"I think so," Eric says. "I - I don't know if you heard, the tour will be in Atlanta next month, and - "

"What tour."

"Oh, I'm - skating with Disney On Ice."

"Disney On Ice."

"That's right."

To his surprise, Coach chuckles. "You're telling me, all those skating lessons and competitions... well, imagine that. I figured you were - I don't even know, son."

"I'm doing okay, Coach. I can send an email, about the tour dates."

"We'd like that," his father says carefully, and "Your mother says I should tell you we love you."

It's not his to say, but "I love you too," Eric says, "I'll send that email." And disconnects.

He's shaking like he's just off the most intense shift of his life. If this all goes the way he thinks it's going to, he'll never know if it worked. But he's given Ricky the biggest thing he can.

_Dear Ricky_ , he writes in Ricky's diary. _If you're reading this, we should both be back where we belong. There's something I need to tell you:_ and he writes down everything he can remember from the phone conversation. He'll let Ricky send the email. Or decide not to, but Eric thinks that, handed a half-finished reconciliation, he'll want to take it the rest of the way. He thinks he knows himself that well.

_We never had a big brother_ , Eric writes, _and I guess you had to grow up a lot faster than I did, which would make me the little brother, so why would you listen to me anyways. I know you've chosen every day not to make that phone call, and now I've taken away that choice. I guess I just wanted you to know that it's not only in alternate universes that things can be different._

_P.S._ he adds at the end, _I'm really sorry about this morning. Hope you didn't get in too much trouble._

**  
JACK

At some point when he wasn't paying attention, Shitty and Ricky have decided that Ricky should try to follow Bittle's normal schedule as much as possible. That's good, Jack thinks. Ricky will be busy and it will be easier for Jack to keep his distance.

He feels torn open. Sure, he's let himself have a few thoughts, a few fantasies. They weren't supposed to build up into some sort of stupid longing with the power to break through the walls between worlds. There's no place for anything like that in Jack's life. There are lines he just can't ever cross, and there's no cheating his way around that.

He wonders for the first time if there's a Jack Zimmermann in Ricky's world. He's not sure what would be worse, to know there's a perfect Jack out there, living the life he was supposed to, or to know that in every world everywhere he's a fuck-up.

He's not going to ask. Ricky probably doesn't even know.

He wonders if every Jack Zimmermann feels so alone.

**  
BITTY

It's like the most low-key heist movie ever: Eric moseys back over to the Sprint Center and goes in the main backstage entrance while the second show is still in progress. They check his ID, but they don't check him _in_ , nobody's keeping track of cast ins and outs. He veers off from the path to the dressing rooms and heads for the room he found earlier, the one full of empty transport crates for the Disney on Ice set pieces and large props. He finds a nice big crate and climbs in. And that's basically it. Hardly any trickier than sneaking cookies into a suitcase, and now he's got twelve hours to kill until Monday morning practice at Samwell.

Of course he doesn't know for sure that Ricky will attend it. Maybe he'll come up with some excuse, or show up, claim an injury, and not take the ice. Eric's weirdly okay with that; it makes no sense to feel like he's got momentum when he's sitting motionless in a crate, but - he can still feel it.

He hears the final applause and the rumble of the audience leaving. Then the long, slow fade-out of the arena going quiet, as part by part, everything is cleaned and put away for tomorrow. Eric dozes for awhile, on and off. He climbs out of the crate around midnight to use the bathroom - there's a tiny, filthy closet with a toilet and sink off a machine-shop area nearby - but gets back in the crate to keep waiting. No point in tempting security. He's sure a building this size has it, but he has no idea if they're sitting in a booth or walking patrols.

3 AM. 4. He's starting to feel a little light-headed, a little floaty and unreal. 5 Central time.

There probably isn't much point in tiptoeing, but he can't help it, when he leaves the crate for the final time to head for the ice.

**  
JACK

Practice. The countdown to playoffs. Coach Hall announces that Bittle is no-contact for practice - apparently they're still a little worried about his "concussion" - and Ricky's eyes sort of widen, like, there might have been _contact_?

God, Jack wants their Bittle back.

But he's not thinking about that. He'd wondered if he should try to deliberately wish - he'd touched the Cup more than once as a baby, maybe he had another one due to him? - but he remembered Mario telling him all those years ago to just focus on playing the game. So Jack is on the ice to have a good practice, and that's all.

**  
BITTY

It is the strangest thing in the world to be in a space the size of the arena, empty.

It's _dark_. He can see glowing exit signs, but the whole structure of lights and rafters is invisible. He's been in Faber nearly empty, but this is a vaster, echoing silence.

He's not sure if he needs skates or not. He's decided not. Faster exit if running turns out to be an option. Wearing his sneakers, he steps out onto the ice. It would be less risky to stay in a corner - maybe even in the aisle between the back and side curtains, where the performers enter the ice - but his sense of rightness of the thing says no, no hiding. He has to be out in the middle.

He walks out.

There's a folded piece of paper clenched in his right hand. ON ICE AT SPRINT, it says. SIDE DOOR UNLOCKED AT LOADING DOCK B, NO ALARM. It's the best he can do.

Please don't see me, he thinks, laying himself down, staring up at whatever security cameras might be watching in the dark. I'm on the ice, but I'm not on the ice _here_.

With his eyes closed it could be any ice anywhere. Cold and hard underneath him. Disney ice... Faber ice... fresh and slick, or chopped up by skates... he almost thinks he can _feel_ it, stretching infinitely away from him in all directions, all the ice everywhere.

And somewhere on the ice, someone is inscribing a perfect circle eight...

... and somewhere on the ice, someone is slotting it in top shelf...

**  
JACK

He's definitely not watching Ricky completely fail a basic passing drill.

**  
BITTY

... and there are hockey skates on the ice, and figure skates, and goalie skates, and those weird hinged speed-skating skates...

**  
JACK

He will never be able to say what it is: a breeze, a sound, a change in the light. He finds himself looking around. What is it he's supposed to see?

**  
BITTY

... and curling shoes, and brooms and stones, and zambonis and ice fishing huts...

**  
JACK

Lardo is coming to her feet, face gone urgent.

"Shitty," she shouts, "Take the penalty!"

**  
BITTY

... and big furry polar bear paws, and leathery penguin feet...

**  
JACK

Shitty looks at Lardo, and he looks at Bittle. And he slew-foots him.

He does it as gently as he can, tripping him so that he falls back against his arm, taking part of the impact as he topples down to the ice.

**  
BITTY

... and all the ice is just a thin rime, and he's falling, falling down, breaking through...

**  
JACK

Coach Hall is yelling something, but Jack's not listening. Bittle, flat on his back, is blinking up at him. _Which_ Bittle?

"Jack," Bittle says, and, oh, he's _beaming_. "Shitty! I'm here! I mean, I'm okay. I'm okay!"

He sits up. "Just a little spill, please let's continue with our normal hockey practice in normal progress!"

Coach Murray still runs the concussion check.

**  
BITTY

Ransom and Holster descend on him as soon as Coach Murray lets him go. "Bitty!" Ransom is crowing. "It's really you, right? How did Lardo know that would work?"

From this Eric learns that Ricky had not shared his same reluctance to reveal the identity swap. It makes sense, once he thinks about it.

"You're going to have to make Shitty and Lardo the biggest pie in the world," Holster tells him, "I heard Hall telling them to see him after practice, they're going to have two new assholes by the time the coaches are done with them."

"Ew," Eric says. He's still not clear on what exactly they did, but Jack cuts by with a curt "get back to practice", and there's no chance to ask.

Eric figures Jack doesn't know, and he eavesdrops on the frogs a little and guesses they don't either. Holster fills him in in the locker room, the way Lardo called to Shitty and Shitty had tripped him.

"I was on my back on the ice in the - other life," Eric whispers back, "I guess I had to... match?"

He has no idea how much Ricky told them about his life. He's not sure how much he wants them to know.

Maybe two days away from his phone has broken him somehow. Or maybe he's finally run into something in his life that he has no desire to report, record, or discuss. He just wants to get done what he needs to do.

Unfortunately, first, he's got morning classes. The only up-side is that all the coursework he didn't get done this weekend is a good excuse to dodge welcome-backs and questions.

**  
JACK

Bittle's acting fishy. Evasive. Shouldn't he be back to normal? He looks sort of starry and dazed, like he's just pulled an all-nighter and needs to be kept away from the caffeine until he recovers.

It would be totally unreasonable to stalk him around campus. But if Jack happens to decide to spend the day in the Haus living room, who could object to that? He does live there. As does Bittle. Who has to come back eventually.

**  
BITTY

Shitty tackles Eric when he finally gets back to the Haus after lunch. "Bitty!" he shrieks at him, "I can't believe you bailed before I got to check for myself! Rans and Holster swore you were fixed, but - you are Bitty, right? Quick, what's the puck over glass rule? Who were we playing when you scored your first goal? What's the secret ingredient in your sweet potato pie?"

Eric squirms his way out of the headlock. "Nice try," he says, "But I'll never tell. No wait, you went through the trash last year, you lunatic."

"I can't believe there's fuckin' tomato soup in that," Shitty says. "Oh, man." He gets Eric in a tight hug. "Please do not be jaunting off to any more alternate worlds, okay Bits?"

Eric looks around a little nervously, but no one else is around except for Jack, who's absorbed in a book and completely ignoring them.

"I'll try my absolute hardest," he tells Shitty. "Now, if you could... let go?"

"Ah, yes, you need to get started on my pie, of course, of course," Shitty says. "Do I get to pick? Can I pick caramel raspberry? No, wait, it was really all Lardo, you should let her pick. She liked that maple walnut."

"I will make you both a pie," Eric says, laughing, "I will make you the best pie. But I need to go do something else right now."

"What could possibly be more important than my pie?"

"I need to come out to my parents."

**  
JACK

Jack is studiously Not Listening, letting Shitty do all the hugging and identity-confirmation that the situation requires.

But when he hears Bittle say he's coming out to his parents, his book is on the floor and he's across the room before Bittle can blink.

"Are you dropping out?" Jack asks. "Are you quitting the team?"

"No, I - "

"Because - Ricky," Jack says, "I think he came out to his parents and they wouldn't have anything to do with him." Shitty nods, while Bittle's eyes widen.

"You knew about Ricky too?" Bittle starts, and, what the hell? Of course Jack knows, he was the one Ricky had turned to, is that really so surprising? But Bittle's still talking. "You're not wrong. They kicked him out and cut him off. But that's not a reason I shouldn't."

Jack can't believe what he's hearing. "Bittle. How is that not a reason - how complicated is it to not do something that's going to mess you up."

**  
BITTY

Eric takes a deep breath. There are so many things he could say here - that he thinks Ricky's coming out had gone about as badly as it possibly could have, that his parents still loved him and missed him in that world despite it, that Eric has reason to think his parents here are more prepared for it now than they had been back then. But none of that is relevant.

Jack's gaze boring into him make him want to tell him the truth.

"I've been scared of it for years," he says. "And part of me always thought they would react like that, and part of me... couldn't believe that. It was crushing, in the other world, to find out that they had. But it was also a relief. The worst thing in the world had been hanging over me and I could never imagine surviving it and then it turned out it happened and I was okay. I mean, Ricky was sad and angry, but he kept going, and he had a good life, and _it's always been going to happen_ , eventually. Whatever it is that's going to happen will happen sooner or later and now I just - I just want to get to the other side and start living there."

**  
JACK

Bittle smiles at them beatifically. Jack can't stand it.

"Your parents could pull you out of Samwell," he objects.

"My parents could refuse to pay for Samwell," Bittle says, "And - I don't know what I'll do, for sure, if they do. Loans, maybe." He rolls his eyes a little at Jack. "I think this semester is paid for, if you're worried about playoffs."

"I'm _worried_ about you making a life-altering decision on the heels of a - a weird experience - "

"It was the whole point of the experience!" Bittle snaps. "And I'm sorry you can't support me, Jack, but it's really none of your business." He nods to Shitty. "Pie soon," he says pointedly, and stomps up the stairs.

Jack goes after him. He catches up to Bittle outside his door and follows him right into his room.

Bittle turns around, outraged.

"Look," Jack says, trying to keep his voice down, "The whole switch thing, it was my fault. Because of a wish I made. It - it happens in the NHL sometimes. So it sort of is my business, okay?"

Bittle looks at him in complete bafflement. "A wish _you_ made... Jack, I don't think so, what kind of wish could you possibly have - were you so sick of me you wished I had never played hockey at all?" He shakes his head. "I don't know what you think, but you weren't there. It was me, Ricky and me, we each had something the other one... needed."

_I needed_ , Jack wants to say, _I needed you. I still need you._ At some level, he realizes his panic is irrational. Bittle is calling his parents, not leaving for war. It makes no sense to beg him to wait a day so Jack can have one night in his arms. No matter how badly it goes - and Jack knows, so intimately, that sometimes the worst thing happens and there's no relief and it doesn't help at all - it's not going to make him go missing again.

Of course Jack hadn't thought a body check could knock him into another universe, either. But he can't deny it's Bittle's risk to take.

"I'm sorry," Jack says. "I'm - I'm really sorry, Bitty." God, he's so tired. "I don't know if it was you, or me, or just some crazy bad luck. But you're right, it's none of my business what you want to do. And I do support you." He thinks back to what Bittle had said. "It wasn't about hockey. What I thought I had - it wasn't that. I would never wish you off the team."

**  
BITTY

Jack turns to go, and it's unbearable, how sad he looks.

"I'm sorry if you're jealous," Eric says softly. He's guessing wildly, but from the way Jack flinches, he's maybe not completely wide of the net. "I don't know why I got a life-changing field trip and not any of y'all. We were all on the same ice, we all get checked all the time."

"I guess it's like ice on a pond," Jack says, still turned away, and Eric's braced for a chirp about how not everybody falls down, not - that. "You just found a weak spot."

"Jack," Eric blurts out. "All ice is just this thick." He holds up his hands, palm to palm, just a little gap between them. "If there's something that would change your life, I think you can get there."

He must sound insane. God, one little mystical vision and he's become a crackpot.

Jack, though, turns back and looks at him.

"Really?" he asks. "All ice is just... that thick?" He lifts one hand, slowly, up to Eric's.

**  
JACK

What is he doing? His hand is shaking. His palm is so close to the sides of Bitty's hands that he can feel the warmth coming off of them through the air. Bitty is staring at their three not-touching hands like he doesn't even dare to breathe. Slowly, like he's disarming a bomb, he pulls one hand back and away.

His other hand is still edge-on to Jack's. Still moving with that painful, careful slowness - maybe he's arming the bomb, Jack is going to explode - Bitty settles his fingertips against Jack's palm. He looks up at Jack, then, all wide eyes and devastating eyelashes and fierce blush.

"Bitty," Jack says hoarsely, and he gives in. He folds his fingers down over Bitty's hand but that's awkward, that's not enough and so he's sliding his fingers between Bitty's so they're slotted together but that's still not enough and now he's tugging, stepping forward, getting his other arm around Bitty's shoulders and Bitty's arm is wrapping around his waist and their clasped hands are between them like some echo of a long-forgotten ballroom hold. Jack tips his face down to Bitty's hair, closing his eyes in surrender.

"I kissed Ricky," Jack confesses. "I thought I wished for the chance to do that."

"Wouldn't take an alternate universe," Bitty says, oh, so fondly, and then he's kissing Jack, swaying slightly on his tiptoes. "Wait," he says, breaking away slightly, "You do mean me and not just Ricky, ri-" So Jack kisses him that time, hard, trying to make it clear.

"I was never going to let myself do this," Jack whispers, "I still probably shouldn't."

"I have no idea what I'm doing," Bitty answers, "And as soon as I can make myself let go of you I'm still going to call my parents, and then I'm probably going to cry. But - you could stay? And maybe... hold me? After? I'm... not... nothing else, I mean, I don't - "

"I think we also owe Shitty and Lardo a pie," Jack says, wrapping his arms around him.

"A pie each," Bitty says. "Pie for a week."

"I wonder if you could make a giant one in, like, a washtub," Jack says. He wonders if he can possibly keep his hands off Bitty in an apron now.

"Maybe a big roasting pan," Bitty giggles, then bites his lip. He pulls gently away from Jack and starts digging in his pocket for his phone. "I do need to do this now."

Jack holds up his hands, close together. "I hear it's just this far to the other side."

**  
BITTY

Eric means to call right away, but he has to kiss Jack one more time, and then one more time, and then one more. In a day that's already involved switching from universe to universe this is the most impossible thing.

He has so many questions for Jack: can he tell Shitty? can he tell his vlog he's seeing someone if he doesn't say whom? is Jack still involved with Kent Parson, and what does that mean for them?

Jack, sitting on his bed (!), is making a vaguely pained expression that is probably supposed to be his supportive face.

Time to cross to another life.

... _ring, ring_...

"Hello, Mother?"

**  
**

**Author's Note:**

> So I wrote "The Things We Did And Didn't Do" and thought, great, I've said everything I have to say about these dorks and I won't need to write in this fandom again. Ha ha ha. Ha. ::facepalm::
> 
> The Disney On Ice touring company shown here is not meant to represent any real Disney On Ice show. By all reports Disney On Ice is a great place to work and no one would ever say otherwise. Also as far as I know there is no current or former show that combines Ratatouille, Mary Poppins, and Finding Nemo. [The fish costume is real though](http://files.list.co.uk/images/2008/09/04/612kidsnemo.jpg).
> 
> Stanley Cup wishes are a Hockey RPF trope; I'm not sure who first came up with them. Credit to the Hockey RPF community I guess.
> 
> I don't think Ngozi's Suzanne and Coach Bittle, as they're shown/implied in canon, would ever actually stop supporting or speaking to Bitty in response to him coming out to them. In my story, I've imagined that things started to diverge when Bitty was fifteen in ways that made their reaction much worse than it would be in canon. (I also think Bitty might not have handled that conversation as well at seventeen as he would now in canon, not that that excuses them.) Of course I know nothing about what Ngozi has planned, maybe they're all secretly vampires, who even knows. I'm sure it will be awesome and/or heartbreaking if it happens.


End file.
